comparative politics midterm Flashcards
logic
learning to be careful about how we construct and evaluate arguments
argument
a set of logically connected statements, typically in the form of a set of premises and conclusion
argument is valid when
accepting its premise compels us to accept its conclusions
argument is invalid if
when we accept the premises of the argument, we are free to accept or reject its conclusion
what is politics
-not just abt government.
-involves all types of social interactions
-central to our everyday lives and relationships
-involves power
-about winners and losers
EVL theory
-response to negative change in one’s environment
1. Exit- accepting change and altering behavior
2. Use Voice- not accepting the change, instead “persuading” government through action to reinstate original environment
3. demonstrate loyalty- accepting the negative change and not changing behavior
E1Lc
E=citizens exit payoff
1=value of benefit taken from the citizen by the government
L=government’s value from having a loyal citizen who does not exit
c=cost of using voice
what happens in evl theory
-choices aren’t random, both sides anticipate the response of the other side to the action made (consequence of their action). process is referred to as backward induction.
insights from EVL theory
- citizen has power over government when a) the citizen must have a credible exit, and government must be dependent on the citizen
- absence of a credible exit plan . citizen has no options, so the government takes away the benefits and the citizen stays . gov can also seize unfair advantage. Taking away benefits in the case of “special interests
- Its difficult to learn much from looking at real-world political situations
Most economic explanations for democracy are linked to a
paradigm known as
Modernization Theory
According to modernization theory, economic development
leads to
the growth of the industrial and service centers, and causes the agricultural sector to shrink
Transformation in the structure of the economy can change the
balance of power by increasing the value of citizen ( the ruled)
exit options
Institutions like — provide a location where the ruled
with exit options can negotiate with the rulers who are
dependent on the citizens
assemblies
The two important conditions for economic development to promote democracy
- The ruler must be dependent on the people. In cases where there the economy is dominated by the natural resources sector; the rulers can generate the revenue they need to stay in power with little or no cooperation from the ruled
- Economic development must increase the value of people’s exit options for dependent rulers to feel compelled to seek their consent to govern
Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
measures the value of all goods
and services produced in a country during a given year. It’s an
indicator of a country’s economy “size”
The constrained state that is a result of the ruler being dependent on enough people with valuable exit options, takes on the features of
modern democracy
Economic development is expected to increase
the number of
societal actors with mobile assets and therefore exit options
Modernization theory asserts that every society goes through
a similar series of political and economic stages. The society also goes through structural changes such as the relative size
of the size of economy
As countries grew, manufacturing and service sectors
developed and became greater than the agricultural sector, People’s assets became more mobile, less legible and less
appropriable by the state
In England, the ability of the ‘gentry’ to hide their wealth
changed the balance of power. The Crown could no longer count on predation. The new economic elites used their power to
strengthen parliament, which helped aggregate their
interests. The elite enjoyed credible exit options
Institutions such as parliaments are built not only to solve informational problems, but to also solve
credible commitment
problems
Economic development often leads to
an increase in the
number of people in the society with credible exit threat over time
Modernization theory
does not predict equal political influence. Rulers and the states they govern are more dependent on some people more than others- wealthy/ middle-class vs poor. And some people enjoy more influence than others – labor vs capital
Modernization theory asserts that
economic development
promotes democracy by transforming the economy so that it’s increasingly dominated by sectors in which people have mobile assets
For economic development to promote democracy, two
conditions must be met
- The ruling class must be dependent on the people. A ruling class that is autonomous and can generate the revenue
needed to stay in power without input or cooperation from the ruled, has no reason to constrain its predatory behavior - Economic development must increase the value of people’s exit options sufficiently enough that rulers are compelled to
bargain with them and ask for their consent
Natural resources
- Empirical evidence shows that governments in natural resource rich countries, and depend on revenue from the natural resources do not become stable democracies (Ross, 2015)
- According to political science scholars, countries with natural resources are likely to be dictatorships, corrupt, have poor governance, civil war and low-quality institutions
Why a dictatorship?
- They are not dependent on citizens. They can generate
revenue by digging out income from the ground and do not have to bargain with citizens or face constraints on their political power in exchange for revenue - Th government does not need to give a positive response to citizen’s demand for greater representation
- Governments do not need to tax citizens making the demand for representation by citizens very low
- Income generated from natural resources can be used by the leaders to consolidate power
The extent to which the government depends on the natural resources for revenue.
It is a country’s dependence on the natural resource revenue, and not the abundance of natural
resources that affects its regime type
Is more about the emergence of democracy than it is about the survival of democracy (Ross, 2015). This is because
In a democracy, natural resources are discovered after a country has institutions that can hold the government accountable
Popular oversight in a democracy prevents a government from using natural resource revenue for coercion and patronage
Foreign Aid Is
he voluntary transfer to capital, goods or services from one country to another in form of a gift, grant or loan
Aid optimists vs Aid pessimists
- Some argue that foreign aid is similar to the political resource curse
- Key difference – Foreign aid makes governments less
dependent on their citizens and more dependent on their foreign aid donors
Donor countries often value achieving
strategic goals with their
foreign aid at least as much as they value obtaining democratic reforms in the recipient countries
The extent to which aid donors can enforce demands for democratic reform depends on if they have
credible exit threats
Foreign aid will only be effective in advancing democracy when
the donor country has not strategic interests in the dependent recipient country
Foreign aid promotes democratization only when
- The recipient country is dependent on the aid
- The aid donor wants to promote democratic reform in the recipient country
- The aid donor can credibly threaten to withdraw aid if its
demands are not met
For economic development to promote democracy, it
must
increase the value of people’s exit options sufficiently that dependent rulers feel compelled to bargain with them and seek their consent
The extent to which economic development affects the value of
people’s exit options depends on the
role of the state in the
economy. If state driven, the citizens might find themselves dependent on the state, in this case economic development
increases support for authoritarian regime and hinders the emergence of democracy
Economic development should advance democracy if it happens in a
diversified economy with a private sector that plays a significant role
Rulers in high-capacity states can
monitor and control
economic activity that people’s exit options don’t increase enough with economic development to compel the state to bargain with them
While rulers in low-capacity states may find that
people’s exit options are now sufficiently valuable due to economic development that they can no longer engage in predatory behavior and must look for consent to govern
Modernization theory examines the relationship between
economic development and democracy
Economic development promotes democracy because of the
changes it brings about in a country’s socioeconomic structure. This includes improved education and growth of the service economy
Modernization theory is conditional, it does not say that
economic development always leads to democracy
cultural arguments for democracy
-Primordialist argument
-Constructivist argument
Primordialist argument
culture exists before politics and ideological guidelines that shape political behavior is responsible for the ideological guidelines that shape behavior
Constructivist argument
culture is constructed or invented but not inherited
Both arguments assert that culture has a
causal effect and to sustain democracy, a democratic culture is needed
Civic culture
Compatible with democracy
Parochial
Compatible with traditional political systems of
African tribes
Subject
Compatible with centralized authoritarian institutions
such as the Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe
3 Basic Types of Political Culture
-Civic culture
-Parochial
-Subject
Civic culture attitudes include
- Individuals believe that they can influence political
decisions - Positive feelings about the political system
- High interpersonal trust levels
- Prefer gradual societal change
Two major and most relevant cross-cultural dimensions today
- Countries with either traditional values ( religion, traditional values, deference to authority), or secular-rational values (less value on traditional roles, values and deference to authority)
- Countries with survival values ( physical and economic security) or self expression values ( have ethnocentric world views, and low levels of tolerance and interpersonal trust)
Economic development matters because while it does not directly produce democracy, it
transforms traditional culture
societies to modern culture societies
2 distinct phases of the modernization process that produce cultural & political
change
- Industrialization phase
- Post industrialization phase
Education and valuable exit options
- Citizens learn organizational and communication skills
needed to collectively mobilize and fight for their political rights - Increased sense of efficacy gives people gives them the
confidence to engage in politics - Promotes higher literacy, creating a market for newspapers and media that can stimulate an interest in politics and coordinate public opinion on need for change
- May lead people to adopt new ideas and increase demand for equality and accountable government
Industrialization phase
societies change from holding traditional values to holding secular-rational values
Post industrialization phase
societies change from holding survival values to holding self expression values
Demographic Transition
the drastic decrease in fertility rate
and fall in mortality rate caused
Demographic Transition had a great effect on the lives and freedom of
women:-
* Less children meant women could pursue other interests
* An increase in female paid employment
* Change in gender norms on women working
* Decrease in gender wage gap
* Decrease in gender education gap
* Mechanization of production lines where men had a natural advantage contributed to the decrease in the gender pay gap
* Began the path to gender equality and increased freedom for women
* With more freedom, women demanded a greater role in the political space. An outcome was universal suffrage
Post Industrialization
- Decline of industrial sector and growth of service sector
- Shift away from survival values to self expression values
- People were able to channel their resources to issues such as gender and racial equality, sexual freedom and reproductive rights- “silent revolution”
- Rising inequality due to the disparity between the older low- skilled industries that required little education, and the high skilled industries that required college education. This led to a rise in income inequality
- The gender education gap is now reversed, with more women graduating college than men
4 Methods for Addressing Sensitive Survey Questions
- Adopt practices that build trust with respondents such as using interviewers that share demographic characteristics such as age and ethnicity with respondents
- Use of randomized response techniques such as a coin or dice into the survey to guarantee confidentiality of responses by individuals
- Use of list experiments by mixing sensitive items into lists that include non-sentitive “control items”
- Use of endorsement experiments – Mixing attitudes towards a sensitive political actor with attitudes towards one or more policies
Islamic and Confucian cultures are
incompatible with democracy
Protestantism has been established as a religion that
encourages
democracy
Traditional definition of culture
a shared cluster of attitudes,
values and beliefs that exist at the level of a nation, region, ethnicity or religion
Alternative and more recent definition of culture
pattern of beliefs, relationships, rituals,
attitudes, and obligations that give meaning to human
interaction
domain of politics
a subset of human behavior that involves the use of power
the study of comparative politics focuses on — level political behavior
state
two views of the state
-contractarian
-predatory
contractarian
individuals “contract” with each other to form a centralized authority- the state- that can prevent or resolve conflicts of interest and maintain social order
predatory
unintentional by-product of individuals seeking increased power. unless countered by competing forces, those seeking power aim to form a centralized political hierarchy that concentrates power in the hands of an elite few
state vs nation
state requires a given territory, while a nation is a group of people with a shared identity such as religion, language and ethnicity. No requirement for a geographical location in a particular place
the social contract view of the state
hobbes description of the state of nature- a war of every man against every man, in which life was “solitary, poor, brutish, and short”
for the state to be a solution to the state of nature as a social contract according to theorists-
- punishment imposed by the state for stealing is sufficiently large enough to deter individuals from stealing
- The tax rate charged by the state in exchange for policing (and providing protection) is not so large that individuals prefer the state of nature to civil society.az
